


holding; being held (5 times)

by Feather (lalaietha)



Series: (even if i could) make a deal with god [your blue-eyed boys related short-fic] [32]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: 5 Things, Disabled Character, Hugs, Hurt/Comfort, Kid Bucky Barnes, Kid Steve Rogers, Memory Loss, Mentally Ill Character, Other, Post-Canon, Pre-Canon, Restraints, Steve got sick a lot, Unrepentant Adoration
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-14
Updated: 2015-02-14
Packaged: 2018-03-12 08:11:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,977
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3349607
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lalaietha/pseuds/Feather
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five hugs. Or something like them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	holding; being held (5 times)

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is part of [**this series**](http://archiveofourown.org/series/132585), which is for short-fic associated with my fic [**your blue-eyed boys**](http://archiveofourown.org/series/107477), because I needed somewhere to stash it. 
> 
> Content note for WWII war-crimes
> 
> Fic touches down over span from shortly after "[first time for everything](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2393735)" through to it's series-order placement; on a Fic Promptly prompt: 
> 
>  
> 
> _Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Bucky Barnes, hugs. A great many hugs for Bucky._
> 
>  
> 
> _(However, it can be genuinely friendly or supportive, or something creepy from from a bad guy messing with his mind.)_

1\. 

The shouting stops when his dad slams out the door, pulling it so hard behind him that it bounces open again. His mother half-shouts, half-screams after him, _I don't even fucking know why you bother to fucking come back you bastard!_ and then there's only the sound of her closing the door, of all the people nearby who'd probably been listening to the fight going back to doing whatever they'd been doing. Sometimes that makes its own noise. Or feels like it does. Like the air changes when so many ears stop listening. 

After a couple minutes, Bucky lets go of his knees and carefully gets down off his bed. He pushes the door open, slowly, and listens until he can hear the soft sounds of his mother crying, and where they're coming from. 

She's in the kitchen, sitting on the floor beside the back door, her face in her hands. When he says, "Mom?" really quietly she looks up, and her makeup's all a mess, but she opens her arms and he stumbles across the floor to crawl into her lap. She wraps her arms around him. Her perfume smells like flowers and she rests her cheek on the top of his head. 

After a while, her tears drip on his arm. He uses the fingers of his other hand to wipe them away, or stretch them into pictures on his skin. His mother rocks back and forth, hugging him tightly, until she stops, sits up, wipes the wet from under her eyes with her fingertips and says, "Good grief, you should be in bed." 

(His father's asleep in the armchair the next morning, wakes up when Bucky comes out to look for breakfast. His father makes eggs and whistles a cheerful tune. He ruffles Bucky's hair and makes coffee and only pours a cup for himself.) 

 

2\. 

Steve feels like a furnace. Bucky keeps looking at the thermometre and trying to decide if the temperature's high enough that he needs to go get Mrs Rogers from the hospital. It maybe is. It's sort of at the line and number she said. But maybe not quite? And, well, she'd have to come home and a shift's a shift - 

He doesn't know. 

Even though he feels like a furnace Steve's curled up and shivering and Bucky's found all the blankets he can. Bucky bites his bottom lip and leans over to shake Steve's shoulder again and get him to drink more water. Steve's mom said he had to drink a lot of water. And sometimes some of the broth. A lot of the time Steve doesn't want to do either, but Bucky's good at kind of bullying him into it. A little, anyway. 

When Steve pushes the cup away Bucky's still chewing on his lip; eventually he says, "Should I go get your mom?" 

Steve shakes his head. Bucky bites the other side of his lip and then says, "Okay. Move over." When Steve frowns at him but squirms back in the narrow bed, Bucky says, "You've got all the blankets so I'm kinda cold, and you think you're cold but you're actually pretty warm, so you can share some of it." 

"I'll get you sick," Steve says, scowling, but Bucky shrugs, climbing up beside him and stealing the second pillow he'd brought from Steve's mom's bed to put behind his back. A little awkwardly, he pulls Steve over to lean up against him instead, so he's sitting up and maybe he'll cough less. Maybe. Hasn't worked so far, but it's worth a shot. Maybe he'll slip down less leaning on a sitting-up-Bucky than a half-dead pillow. Bucky settles one arm around Steve's shoulders. 

Says, "Think if I'm gonna get sick I'm already gonna get sick, Steve, so just shut up and go back to sleep, okay?" 

Steve's gotta feel pretty lousy, because that's what he does. Or at least he closes his eyes and doesn't say anything else, and after a minute his arms work around Bucky's waist and hold tight. 

Actually he's so hot after a couple minutes Bucky awkwardly kicks all but one of the blankets off himself. After a while he falls asleep, sitting up against the wall, until Steve starts to really cough again. 

 

3\. 

Steve takes first watch, which is basically the same as saying Steve's finding an excuse to go sit by himself slightly away from everyone else in the dark and the cold. Because everyone else has the sense God gave ducklings, they're asleep within minutes, but Bucky waits until after they are, quietly gets up and steals the bottle of port out of Dernier's pack before following Steve to where he sits, helmet beside him, head in his hands, elbows on his knees. 

"Here," says Bucky, reaching over to tap the bottle against Steve's shoulder before he comes around the stump to sit beside him. Steve looks up, looks briefly guilty and then makes a face. 

"Doesn't do anything," he objects, but takes the bottle from Bucky. 

"Drink it anyway," Bucky says, "maybe your head doesn't know yet." When Steve makes another face but obeys and takes a drink, Bucky says, "You couldn't do anything. They were already dead a week ago, we couldn't've got here any faster." He takes the bottle back after Steve puts the cork in and puts it down by his ankle. 

"Yeah," Steve says. "I know." He's looking at the ground between his boots again. 

He takes this shit hard, but it's the God-honest truth: a week ago they were dug in under fire miles away, and that's when these people, these prisoners were dying, lined up in front of a hole they probably dug and shot. HYDRA didn't give a shit about the rules of war, rules of decency, anything, and and didn't bother acting like they did. Allied Command could try as hard as they like to pretend that Schmidt and Hitler are still the same fucking thing, but they aren't anymore and it makes for two wars going on here that just happen to be going on at the same time - that's all. One war belongs to the rest of the world and the other one belongs, Bucky thinks wryly, to the tiny batshit crew of them, with whoever they're stealing from the 107th _this_ time. 

Hitler wants an empire; Schmidt just wants to kill everyone he doesn't think is worthy of living. So he leaves a lot of dead bodies in his wake. And Steve takes that hard, and he'll brood about it for days if he can get away with it. 

"Liar," Bucky says, reaching over to mess up his hair. "You've got new tricks, Steve," he adds when Steve doesn't say anything, "but you're still not God. And hubris doesn't look good on you." 

After a couple seconds for that to sink in, Steve turns his head sideways to give him a sour look. "Ouch," he says. 

"Hey, s'what I'm here for," Bucky says, blandly, as Steve sits up. "You might manage to fool everyone else, Captain America, but I know you better than that." 

Steve runs a hand over his face and Bucky shakes his head. He hooks an arm around the top of Steve's shoulders, rests his hand against the side of Steve's head and pulls it over towards him. Feels Steve sigh, in something like defeat. "Can't save everyone," Bucky says, with more regret and less brisk, because fuck, just because he knows it better than Steve doesn't mean he _likes_ it. "Sorry. What's done's done, can't change it." 

Something Sarah Rogers used to say. A lot. 

Steve leans on him a little, but carefully; Bucky doesn't think Steve's ever going to manage to forget he weighs more now than he used to. "Yeah," he says, a little dully. "Right. Think about what to do now instead." 

"Hey, she was your mom," Bucky informs him and gets Steve shoving his hip over almost enough to knock Bucky off the stump. Bucky grins at him. 

"You should go get some sleep," Steve says, and Bucky snorts. 

"Right, beside the living drill," he says, meaning Morita's bad habit of snoring. "So you can sit here stew by yourself. Yeah, whatever," he says, when Steve shakes his head but makes a little shrug that means he's gonna give up and stop trying that tack, "I'll sleep when I'm dead." 

 

4\. 

(Consciousness comes. Thoughts slow. Blurred vision. Burn, ache - thaw. Straps: tight on wrists, upper arms, throat, rib-cage, hips, thighs, ankles. Erratic hearing; no smell; poor muscle control, organic hand opening and closing slower and more awkward than desired. Experimental swallow indicates presence in throat; faint sensation at organic wrist indicates IV, saline. Nutrition; rehydration. Standard.) 

(Something. Something tugs. Something on the edge of . . . remembering. No. Nothing to remember. Last mission, remembered, last alteration, remembered, this . . . something else. Tactile. Sense of another body. Close. Smell? The thought that there is a scent with no word but known, wanted . . .)

(Nothing. Not relevant. Vision still poor; motor control substandard. Close eyes. Be still. Wait until straps undone, feeding tubes removed.) 

(Wait.)

 

5\. 

It's not a bad day. Which should be damning with faint fucking praise but isn't. Is actually kind of a fucking miracle. Because it's not just today. Yesterday wasn't a bad day. Day before that. Tomorrow might not be. Four fucking days in a row, someone phone the papers. 

And it honestly isn't a bad day, it's just kind of flat and grey, and Bucky finds himself going through pot after pot of coffee just looking for something that isn't, for heat, smell, taste. There's a chance it'll upset his stomach, but there's also a chance that fucking _breathing_ will upset his stomach, so he doesn't really care. If he tried to actually live his life by what doesn't make his stomach fucked up, he'd go crazier than he already is. 

Now he's standing in front of the stove waiting for the pot to boil and staring at it in disinterest. Trying to think of something to put on, watch or listen to or read or fucking _something_ that might count as diversion, even, for another hour. Maybe more. And it's not like Steve startles him, it's not like Steve _could_ : he knows the second Steve comes in from his little experimental garden on the balcony, the second he steps into the kitchen, the second he's close. Would know with anyone, but especially, especially with Steve. 

He still doesn't really expect Steve to work both arms around his waist, rest his head on Bucky's shoulder, and then just sort of stop there. 

"What are you doing?" he asks, the question a sharp, mostly defensive reflex he kind of wishes he didn't have. Just like the moment where everything tenses, the one he can't stop but has finally got Steve to agree to ignore. It's better if he ignores it. It doesn't mean anything. It just fucking happens. The best proof of that is how everything unwinds now, slowly, something tight at the top of his spine finally untwisting at the warmth against his back. 

"It's called a hug," Steve replies blandly, voice only a little bit muffled by Bucky's shoulder. "It's a thing people do." 

"Smartass," Bucky says, dryly. "You know what I mean." 

"I'm hugging you," Steve clarifies in more or less the same voice, because he's decided to be a little shit about it. "Because I want to." 

Bucky rolls his eyes, but it's not exactly like he wants Steve to let go, so he just dumps the coffee in the now boiling water and says, "Whatever makes you happy, Steve," in a patient, gently mocking voice. 

"Mn," Steve says, intelligently, and then adds, "y'know, _you_ make me happy," and Bucky has to stop and take a minute how to remember how to breathe again.


End file.
